Part 118
Sitemap --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - Lots More fabulous items/ideas for a Bioshock Rapture MMORPG --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- --- - Part 118 --- --- --- --- --- --- Grisly deaths - A Bit Too Gratuitous : But remember this THIS IS showing the evils of American Exceptionalism. Historic .... DERRRRP !!!! Actually, couldn't you say that Infinite BS was by far worse ?? There seeing what Levine & Co have done with the fruits of the real American Exceptionalism (computer game created as least common denominator, hacked together pablum, false promises ...) ?? Ryan would Scoff in derision. --- --- --- Building Concept Pix (Shows a Better Game) ... ' : pixs An awful lot of the Infinite BS game's disjoint Columbia was done to facilitate distance 'views' and 'scenes'(avoiding detail work/inhabitants), and to separate/restrict the Player's movement. Improvements (possible with the MMOPRG system) : * Make Columbia more a 3D Tower of Babel type plan (a bit better engineering-wise as far as THAT goes even with anything like this Fantasy). Make a central mass a bit bigger (as in ALOT), and it could have been the whole city. (where people don't constantly have to wait and take conveyances to get to separate floaty places instead of walking direct, and distances across the 'city' are somewhat shorter). Still can be festooned with statues (perhaps a general donut shape with an 'interior space/area to protect from winds, and have some surrounding true awesomeness, etc). * Interior levels, but locally more enclosed to avoid the rendering issues of those grand views of the Big-ification which really didn't add that much to that game. Interior dome space encrusted with all those eclectic buildings (layers of holiness to attempt to follow the faux-biblical patterns). No real need for too tall ceilings (like 3X what they would be even to represent 'normal' high ceilings.) * The horrendous cold of the altitude also could be negated. Just a lower altitude might help a bit too (10000-12000ft at which many cities/towns exist at Real World). And note to designers - small clouds (across small distances) DO NOT obscure as much as you show them to. * Spring Heeled Jack pix type 'Gear' (something at least NOT quantumz-based Fantasy). Now when you 'jump' you might have half a chance on a 'miss' of latching onto something instead of a fatal 10000 foot fall. * Populace embracing the new Columbia-isms, instead of simply dropping 1890s-1910s archetypes into Columbia to behave (if not strangely standing still) like they were on an American Main Street still (which itself is an atypical cliche). * Have the 'white' populace show more enthusiasm for their 'The Elect' status, and being fortunate to live in such a 'holy' place'. * Alot more movement/interactions between levels by the NPCs (ie- wearing their little Angel Wings or at least elevators/people-movers/bridges), though 3D game movement and behaviors are (when non-precanned) MUCH harder to do convincingly (it takes skill and knowhow), and the existing NPC intelligence was limited enough already (pathetic to STILL have most of them stand around like mannequins, ridiculously unreactive to the Player or even having much varied ordinary behavior). * Infinite BS players might not understand : that in 1900 electric ANYTHING was fairly exceptional and only slowly starting to come into common usage (rich city people first). Thus the technologies shown with an implied electric nature would mostly have to be Tear stolen, and then locally developed, which always being a massive effort in time/money/know-how, might be highly unlikely in such a microcosm (a 'city' which is really a town). Steam (a better understood/prevalent period technology) would likely still be in widespread normal/unmodified use, without any Quantumz widgets grafted on. Fuel burning powerplants would be needed with their pall of smoke (assuming we get a way all that fuel gets delivered). * Have the 'quantum' marvels (including all the 'Tear' stolen goodies) showcased to stand out more as worthy of the "New Eden", and not just as ordinary drudge uses ("Oh WE have that fine Quantum Sewage Disposal System Now, Aren't WE Blessed !!!") * Effluvium flows downhill, and with the pipes getting progressively less well-maintained as you get into the lower Untermenschen levels, there are the obvious results (slippery sewage as a NEW hazard). Lots of fine euphemisms now are possible. For a workable system, Piped-in Water similarly calls for Water Tanks located high in the local structure. A greater massing of Columbia makes for a more cohesive distribution system (of ALL utilities), which should be more obviously shown (was a hallmark of those times). * Balloon things are 'fliers' (and/or there are Rhesus monkeys flying little biplanes/triplanes ???) No need for a 5 ton (with all parts required - manipulator/power/control/structural) 'Particle Control/Levitation Machine' for each individual aircraft/vehicle. There comes a point where fancy technology is too expensive for common uses when other mundane technologies are far cheaper. A flying human is an achievement, a flying advertisement is a mundane. * Those grey blocks ('land' which the city sections sit on) contain the Sewer levels, where the lower orders toil ceaselessly to make the New Eden above so comfortable and clean. The Police State, which Columbia is shown to be (every other inhabitant seems to be an armed security unit), keeps them under The Founders collective 'Thumb', and grovellingly grateful for the crumbs their hard work is rewarded with. An extensive system of Informers keep the likes of the 'Vox' afraid to do anything. * Scaffolding hanging off the bottom - the untidy places where the nastiness must be done to keep the upper city more 'pure' and 'white'. Perpetual shadow is for 'the damned', who serve 'the righteous'. Such places are frequently named 'Hades' and 'Perdition'/'Purgatory' and 'Hell' (allusions to 'brimstone' particularly in the sweltering main engine/boiler rooms that power Columbia). * Remember it all hangs from the 'Lunette' hook at the top (and that hook thing in BaS2 would make a neat 3D printed Christmas Tree Ornament ... oops - "Comstockmas" is celebrated in Columbia, since there isn't mention/presence of any real Christianity ANYWHERE in the game). Structure would have to reflect this 'hanging' as a basic structural necessity even when Balloons are employed ... * If the whole (one-piece) city thing rotated and there were propeller-like lifting airfoil surfaces extrusions (helicopter-like lift), then you might not need the quantumz stuff that was such Poisonous Fantasy Crutchification (PFC). You apparently (as a Citizen) would get used to the spinning (as you also would have to the fatally thin air), and that could even have an interesting effect of everything being sloped to allow for the centrifigal forces (sluicing the sewage off/out the edges, disposal of garbage, corpses, etc...). The Potential is endless, and fully doable using the MMORPG engine and tools (and imagination, and some actual thought about proper design and consideration for technology of the time period). --- --- --- '''The Rewind ... ' : So now that we've (in the MMORPG) disposed of all the mis-used Quantum crap (fake/non-sensical/facade 'science') which Infinite BS WAS half-arsedly based on, What is left to us ? : * Lighter-than-Air - balloonistic technology - helium/hydrogen/hot-air buoyancy ... Flotation (lighter than air) cells have to be distributed to minimize buoyancy force stresses - including 'Ballast tanks' to adjust altitude and trim. Sorry, it WONT be with balloons weirdly put on the BOTTOM of the structure. Ignorance of the basic Laws of Physics is no defense (and is/was actually downright Lame-Assed™ .) * The Big Floating Buildings/City ? Maybe if they are built like real Zeppelins with lightweight EVERYTHING Pix. Buildings made out of the equivalent of styrofoam (if you want brickwork), and light metals and screening (chicken) wire, and thin veneers. * Usual issues with large lightweight constructions is structural problems from Wind Shear, which historically destroyed more than one famous Airship and proved their limitations ( And a huge 'city' structure will be subjected to many times the forces those were.) The whole thing (floaty city) needs to be super lightweight, so the structural support members have to be quite thin. * Surfaces catch the wind, and large surfaces generate huge forces which act upon the structure. Any kind of bending usually twists and deforms the structure, leading to collapse and destruction. The longer and more stringy/spread out the structure is, the far worse it gets (leverage works against you). * Materials line Carbon fiber/nanotubes for tensile strength ??? ... would help (though in real life those things HAVE TO BE encased in an epoxy matrix that greatly increases its weight, making the result only a few times stronger that the same amount of steel/aluminuim/magnesium alloys). Somebody would have to have (Fantasy science again) stolen this technology (the materials and the tools to make/work it) from some advanced parallel dimension, as even today we have barely begun to use them. Giant spider aliens might be a more realistic alternative for 1900. * Loooong THIN Compression struts ? The thing will have to be extensively guy-wired to keep the structural beams straight every which way (it will make the Stockholm Telephone Tower seem 'clean' by comparison). Completely ready to collapse on only minor failure, with no way out of that (except magical shit the game writers tried to pass off as 'science')... Hmm, SO Everything will have to be "guy wired" to everything else - embedded/integral - so now the place is one big 'jungle gym'? (and alot more 'spider' euphemisms...). * We never were told what drove Columbia - or what powered it (They burned QUANTUMZ Bullshit for fuel - they had INFINITE supplies of that ...) Its a wonder Booker didn't complain the whole place smelt of burnt cow paddies. Less independent movement for it then (energy - it costs) ... * The New Sci-Fi Balloonoid Columbia could have sails, and strategically use ground anchors when needed (still largely at the mercy of the winds ...). * None of this scatalogical distribution of the city into irregular oddly-positioned chunks - one big mass would be better (and possibly alot more impressive looking). Controlling it in just one piece would be enough work. Being less spread out and more piled together would help to minimize the shear stresses and wind-affecting surface area (and less likelihood of pieces eventually smashing together). * The place will still shimmy and shake (and rock) and give people motion sickness (no matter how well it is stabilized). People surviving its alleged high altitude would still be the 'gotcha'. In any case, genius created Medications would be required, or they would have to keep the city to no more than 10000 feet most of the time (within easy reach of even little balloons with stick of lit dynamite sent up to it by angered surface dwellers). * Maybe make Columbia a mass of small independently floating sections all flexibly tied together (if pushed together by random winds, their hard 'living' section will be buffered to withstand the impact forces). The Big Balloons above will impact before the smaller things slung underneath - those would have to be blimplike instead of rigid to have enough 'give' to cushion sufficiently (Blimps, largely without rigid internal structure, have lasted the test of time and been used til the present day because they can be subject to more severe wind forces and survive). * Are you sure you don't want this Columbia to be under the Arctic Ice or Underground ? It would be far simpler ... Assuming you don't want inconsistent magic or really poor fake-science as the basis for your game (as WAS delivered for Infinite BS). Maybe an artificial Island (... 'floating' ) ??? OR Ontop of a remote Mountain ? Would it really change that cockamamie plot all that much ??? * A microcosm without explanation of how that microcosm can exist (when they went to such pains to thoroughly explain the bullshit fake-science).. Pirate City -- stealing what it needs, enslaving unfortunate people, technology and goods stolen through Tears (now just all taken/stolen from the ground since the problematic Quantum Bullshit is GONE). Police state, manipulative delusional people, plenty of wrongness to easily warrant the Player turning into a mass murderer, for 'the right reasons'. --- --- --- '''Big Inter-Sectional Bulkhead Doors : A number of my Level Maps have these Bulkhead Doors indicated, located between major sections of the city and the major connection passages. Emergency bulkheads would only be deployed when required, and not constantly be opening and closing. Such a barrier would have to seal tightly -- grooves in walls and a sufficiently deep indent into floor to receive and seal the entire edge of the 'door'. A spring loaded plate covered catchment large enough for any likely obstructions to be crushed/sheared and pushed into by the doors, for which you probably want hydraulic driving force (and some similar mechanism to lift them again - after emergency is fixed or after routine testing/maintenance - though slower is OK then). Consider if a Trolley/Tram Car was in the way, the door would have to shear through it to seal properly (utilizing shear blades on the doors edges to facilitate that). You don't want any significant openings left by crushed materials, as water pressure at Rapture's apparent depth will pass through even small/thin gaps and fill-up virtually all the air volume in a very short time (minutes). Small hairline openings/leaks could be handled by local pumps while repairs were completed. Such a Bulkhead safety door (and its mechanisms) would have to be up or down in the building structure within its own sealed space. With the larger size of the portal openings (versus a 6 X 7 foot Securis door) these 'big' doors would be quite huge (and being a flat plate be quite thick enough to withstand the force put upon its whole surface at ocean pressure, with the force being transferred to the door's well anchored frame). Two intermeshing doors might work, but would be that much more complicated. You probably would want a bulkhead like this protecting each end of those in-game Tramway Viaducts. IF it was a real logically engineered system running through/continued between multiple building clusters, you might want each Building Cluster's Tram Station sealed separate, and protected by the smaller/simpler Securis doors, and thus requiring only one of these huge/expensive bulkhead door system for the tracks. (You would also have man-sized airlocks built into the track Viaduct to allow repairs, to do the pumping out, and the repressurization IF/WHEN such a catastrophic leak took place. --- --- --- Hot Off The Presses : The Bigger newspapers in Rapture would have linotype machine(s), and the mechanical presses they fed, originally brought there by their Owners. But smaller newspapers (and everybody who thought they would be a 'journalist') would still be using handset type and page printing presses (or on the REALLY cheap end - mimeograph machines). Advertisements and various other typesetting job type businesses, likewise. You don't "just build" something as complicated as a linotype machine (despite the game writer/author's ignorance/carelessness about doing/assuming things unrealistically just like way). And even then, how many such machines could any such manufacturing company then really be able to sell ? (and at the price of something largely handbuilt - VERY expensive). The truth is ALOT of things were originally brought in from the Surface, and were NEVER manufactured in Rapture. Expect more than a few mimeographed paper items in MMORPG Rapture. The age of Computer Publishing hadn't come yet (later there was some hopes of ADAM enhanced monkey-set type, but hopes were dashed as they turned out to be very bad at spelling). --- --- As a Tribute to the Canon Breakage in the BaSx DLC ' : We see one of Sander Cohen's "Plasterpieces" which is obviously Elizabeth, who like Cohen's other disciples was disposable, and in HIS mind best employed as PART of his 'art'. Perhaps a Songbird 'fished out of the drink' might be seen in a scrap pile, or being cooked by Splicers for dinner. --- --- --- '''Why Would Porter Have a 'Color TV' in His Lair ? ' : Was there an attempt to imply that he was creating it (another magical universal genius)?? Unlikely, with it being outside of his line of technology. More likely, McClendon was developing it, and THIS was a demonstration unit (It would be a big project to actually manufacture, so McClendon would need many investors). One slight problem - for a 'Color' TV you need to have a 'Color' camera to generate the pictures in the same mode. SO there should have been a setup of a Color Camera somewhere, feeding that static test pattern picture to that TV (they actually did that in those early days by placing a board with the pattern in front of the camera). --- --- --- 'Handheld Devices - How Far Can You Reduce Graphic Quality (Processing Ability Required) In This Game ' : Lower capability than a Gaming PC, this could be used for more than a little MMORPG activity (as long as they have that PC for the rest of the game). (American NTSC TVs were ~ 483 lines of 640 'pixels') 2D static no problem, simple canned animations/vid the same. Text might take a bit of scrolling. Simple 3D or static 3D useful for maps and interfaces used for inventory/business/fabrication/mini-games/communications. 3D processing is becoming more powerful in handhelds, though they are weak throwbacks compared to PC graphic card capabilities. Resolution is going up, so interfaces won't have a problem unless they get too small to see, or excede some 'finger-size' limitation for size/number of activation buttons. --- --- --- 'Asset type #42 - Paperwork and Clippings ' : Example - Lutwidge_Writings (SitS Assets) - examples of all the wonderful paperwork Assets that could possibly be created for the MMORPG game (paper trail of insanity stories and used for fill-in of previous Canon). New Rapture - Old Rapture - backstory, mission materials(clues), everyday (50s) ordinary modern paperwork (bills, advertisements, publications/etc ...). The MMORPG tools allow creating such stuff, and Templates (once created, and some players will be very good at doing this task) with systemized styles/layout will make adding additional Assets easier. --- --- --- 'Game 360 Degree View Interface ': Someday many games will have this (VR headsets possibly, though not seeing the complex controls THEN becomes an issue - restricted to voice/handglove gestures/whatever). Cone of Silence style wrap around Monitors ?? Displays something like 4X the visual stuff, being drawn with all the objects and antics of NPCs/Players surrounding you (or being ready to be drawn after a quick turn). Sound ? 3D sound cues are a nice detail. I predict : Lawyers will get rich from Repetitive Motion Stress Lawsuits (from turning your head constantly while playing) ... That besides eyestrain issues. Reports of Nausea (lasting hours afterward) are already happening and will be grist fro lawsuits and such. --- --- --- 'Realism is Hard (Usually Too Hard to Be Fun) ' : Realism in games is too fatal for any interesting activities (in real life you don't come back to life to get 'Do Overs' (also your arms/legs dont grow back, usually). -- Call of Duty - YOU DIE - FAIL - GAME OVER!! with great frequency - and even their 'Hard' mode is triflingly EASY compared to the Real World). Need more weird/varied things/results to happen in the game -- less fatal, more contigencies for players to learn/adapt to - and BE GIVEN the chance to react/compensate/learn without fatal GAME OVER. For this MMORPG the Only Perma-Death is when the Player chooses to rebuild/restart their entire character (they are allowed only One 'avatar' per paid account). And NO inheriting stuff directly (may be hard to stop indirect reuse/transfer via other Players) - of course the Playing Knowhow about playing they got can't be removed. --- --- '''Changes Post-BS2 : With New Rapture a-building, and Lamb gone, there weren't as many corpses as there used to be. So you might find two Little Sisters fighting over who gets a corpse : "Its Mine !!!" "No Its Mine !!!" "My Daddy is Bigger than Your Daddy!!" "No he's not !!!" "Yes he is !!!" They might be this way for a while, with the Big Daddies looking at each other shaking their heads, until ... --- --- --- Realistic Cohesion Within Game Making (The Little Details) ' : Game companies have lots of problems : Memos missed, constant Revisions, Cost of redoing Assets, Limited coordination, Little Research done or possessing the knowledge of reality (to understand how wrong things can be). Example - The tall building spires seen in some Rapture cityscape pictures - Not an air siphon, not light poles, but a great thing to get yanked-on/bent by ocean currents or mashed by passing icebergs. Repeated over and over (overused) in some of the external views (low priority asset), they are just some artist's "themey" idea. Some level designer saw a picture of the Chrysler Building (who's spike was added when buildings were competing to be 'The Tallest' in the 30s) and just cloned it over and over '(AND it was a fricken Skybox texture, NOT a 3D asset that would take alot more work to do add some variation) ' . On the Empire State Building it was a tower (lower part was originally envisioned (for a short time) as a dirigible mooring dock), and later it was extended much taller to serve as a radio antenna (and lightning rod). That really narrow spike on the Empire State Building wasn't added til 1951 (a Large Antenna atop the mooring mast tower) so having them on a whole bunch of tall Rapture buildings in the Skyline isn't overly logical (anachronistic with most buildings there built before that date). Radio waves travel VERY badly through water, so those things seen wouldn't really be antennas. Structurally with Ocean currents they also would be problematic. Multiples of the same impractical shape also doesn't seem logical (tall building stand out, its why THEY are built so exceptionally tall, and because of their cost, there are actually few like them). If the Player's view location had been more realistically lower, then all kinds of adjacent buildings could have reasonably been shown/seen, instead of a horizon which had to be 'fillerized', so as to not otherwise look empty (at least in Columbia you had clouds instead of inky black nothingness). --- --- --- '''Summary - Rapture Gene Tech ' : It is something a bit more complicated than a mechanism to assist in placing pre-made genes (what is done these days) which are supposed to cause the Plasmid/Tonic effects - Reverting cells to Stem-Cell or to partially-Pluripotent (similar pre-tissue) then to be changeable by the new (added) genetic patterns. The real discovery was THAT fundamental mechanism, which made the rest possible . Retrovirus are used to insert multiple nuclear genes and others as RNA (which eventually deteriorates, so that the effect isn't permanent) - that's a mechanism good enough to produce the physical complexity. (Versus a much more horrifically complex DNA changing mechanism). Stepping up the body's metabolism for fairly quick tissue changing and powering the Plasmids/Tonics is also part of the modifications. Sorry it CANNOT be as fast as it is portrayed in-game when you take a new Plasmid. Plasmid changes could potentially coexist to make the switching/use of different ones reasonable quick. A slower process would be shown in the MMORPG for when the Player plays a Splicer (who actually rarely have more than on Plasmid and a small set of Tonics at most.) The Player's main character avatar, who is an ex-Splicer, uses ADAM chiefly for Medical based healing, likewise done with slower controlled processes). --- --- 'Waterproof Boots (New Rapture "Accessorizing: ...) ' : Basic equipment for various types of city workers (and the MMORPG's Player Adventurer). Didn't get big until the Rapture 'Civil War' was started, and significant damage was done to City, and then because of the anarchists/'rebels' disruptions the city couldn't keep up with the repair demand. Hip Boots are at a premium ... --- --- --- 'Computer Hacker Story - "The Great Ryan Announcement" (Thinker Mimic) ' : "This Is Andrew Ryan and I Have a Message for You : Parasite are now to be Loved and given all we Own ... They are the Way of The Future. That is All." Factors : * Computers * Remote Access (the computers are an 'advanced' network based system) * Bored Teenagers (only few can get hands on them though ... this isn't age of the PC or quite of there being Homebrew Clubs, yet ... * Sloppy Security - new things that not well understood (apparently many big companies and their customers even today haven't really a clue...) * Criminals - wire fraud, no ATMs yet, but banks use the computers, and this kindof computer stuff still is too new to have so many security considerations already addressed. Being thwarted by The Thinker that was programmed smarter than the Hackers (a 'Sting' operation to catch them, and a little time in Persephone to teach them about abusing the system). Though the Thinker's AI stuff is more trickery and 'simulation' than actual intelligence. Some mainframe operator using the Thinker to "Put the fear of Ryan" into the Hacker miscreants would be more likely. --- --- --- 'A Clean Rapture Is A Happy Rapture, Mr Bubbles ' : Might've been interesting to see Big Daddies dragging off bodies after you killed them (but then it would clash with the strategically placed 'mood' corpses everywhere). They might as well do this after the Little Sisters were done with them, so untidy. (Unless ADAM regenerates allowing multiple 'Harvestings' per corpse ???) --- --- --- 'Good Writing (Sorry Ken ... No Gold Star) ' : One thing about basing a story on a (sortof) historic setting is the Player is supposed to be able to assume that a cohesive (maybe recognizable) environment is in place. That most of Society (of the setting's time) is still in place (and works as expected). Much of what was presented for Rapture (modeled on an Urban American cityscape of the late 40s/early 50s) was spotty and vague, with contradictions presented (from what the real time period was like -- INSTEAD with writers thinking/assuming it was like today), and lots of such sloppy assumptions. Rapture was largely a wreck, but that wouldn't change what the the backstory elements reflected. Game Makers seem to only want 'their scenes', and their Failtopia contexts for mass killing, and don't really care all that much to provide a realistic background (even if only hinted at) which SHOULD exist in the situational setting. (The Bioshock games, though with more of this element than other games, still fell short of what they should have shown if this element was actually important). Rapture WOULD have laws, it WOULD have authorities to enforce those laws. The Objectivist system the writers purport to base Rapture's society on, requires systems and institutions existing to support a working/coordinated Society (which the story said existed for more than 10 years by the time of the first game). Showing even the merest hint/clues/vagaries of their existence would have made for a better presentation (and would NOT have been that hard to include). --- --- 'The Little Sisters Conditioning Must've been an Extensive Process ... ' : "Daddy, Why do some of these Angels taste like Ass ??" "But I DON'T Wanna !!!! ..." "Mr Bubbles Stepped on Me Again !!!" "Ooh, Potato Chips ! ... *Urp* ... My belly hurts ..." "Look out, here comes Papa Suchong ! Hide !!!!" "I'M HUNGRY!!! That one over there looks tasty. Go kill it Mr Bubbles." --- --- --- '''MMORPG Voice Assets Issue : Seeing all the many BioShock voice snippets of some of the Splicer 'flavors', having multiple sayings (so as to not to be too repetitive) for the many different and generic situations ( *Sees Target Fleeing*, *Using a Vending Machine*, *Player Dies*, etc....) it demonstrates a problem for the MMORPG where : * 0) The terrain is more continuous and variable than your typical 'level'-based-game, where Assets are preloaded and unfortunately limited in the flavors presented (How many Splicers/BD types did you ever see within one level ?) Preloading issues with too many possibilities in the 'near' future (required to 'react' - play the audio, gesture animation, in a timely fashion). * 1) The more complex MMORPG environment would require MANY more potential responses to additional things (including general 'with-Player' appropriate social interactions, and those between other NPCs), and then multiple versions of those to not sound moronically repetitive. (In the Solo games the voice snippets are largely "flavor" as the player doesn't 'converse' and has more attention on trying to kill the Splicer.) * 2) Recordings made by Asset Creator 'Voice Actors' are bulky, instantly needed, and numerous. These Generic Sets also have to be comprehensive to be automatically scripted in use (Templated). * 3) MMORPG has many more 'flavors' of NPCs, with different voices/accents/mannerisms/subject matter... * 4) Players may pass through the same environment innumerable times making it more likely for the 'sayings' to become noticeably repetitive, so variations are highly desirable. Solutions (?) : * Voice synthesis might be triflingly for some generic NPCs, but for those with any distinct character it won't be sufficient. Computer voice synthesis needs to get ALOT better (... with time it will). * Phrase combinations (script control stitching a dictionary of phrase snippets together) - inflections are usually lost, but recombination offers huge variable responses. * Simple (on-the-fly) Audio Processing of variations can only be done in a limited way (speed/frequency shifts) * When you hear them at a distance, it is more important they be heard clearly than be nuanced. But circumstances can't guarantee this distance (you will probably hear it close up). Distance limitation can be imposed (ambient noise), and the actual full audio need not be produced on the client. Muttered simulations that some thing is being said can be simpler (and used alot). * Voice Text Bubbles can/may sometimes be a viable substitute (particularly for important voice messages). * Specific Mission Scenario's voice clips CAN be largely preloaded for their predefined inhabitants -- thus can be premade/played precisely (though now being unique, they may have little reuse value, and numerous Scenarios all requiring lots of Voice Acting Assets is a whole separate problem). * Localization (different language versions) is ALSO a whole seperate issue. --- --- --- --- --- . . . . .